How can I get back Mail Auto-Complete email addresses?

It worked! Thanks Drew!!!!!!

Note that they are symlinks and not finder aliases ... you need to use the terminal syntax that rootami used (ln -s ...) or get a utility that will do symlinks for you!

I just got a new MBP and ran the migration assistant. Afther that, I couldn't get mail to see my iCould contacts. I tried all sorts of solutions, but this one worked like a charm in 3 minutes.

Thanks!

That's great you are back in business. Mine has done it again three time since then so keep your tools handy.

I have a pretty vanilla setup so I'm surprised the problem is recurring. One hypothesis is that my third party backup software, which i run at home to backup this problematic work desktop, is causing issues. The other hypothesis is that something is happening when i try to quit mail as i am having to use force quit about a quarter of the time.

Another symptom of this problem (mail symlinks going bad) popped up today when Mail would crash on startup. It had nothing to do with my Mail folder but rather that the symlinks had gone bad again and instead of just preventing auto-complete it was crashing the program at startup.

"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

Thanx SOOOOOO much! U made my day! Mountain Lion is the buggiest OS since System 7! 😝

I can now have access to my address book... Aweome!

Thank you Drew, that worked for me also!

Yes! This solution also fixed my problem. Very strange, just started this morning, last night worked fine!

rootami, that was the ideal solution for me. thank you for posting the details.

I am so ready to go get a PC after having macs for years. This is not much different and I've used both. No wonder their stock is tanking. Thx for the tip!

This fixes the issue, problem is, I have to keep doing it every day or two then reset all my preferences. I have Microsoft Office and I’m actually thinking of switching to Outlook.

Yep it's a major pain as I have to do it at least once per week. I keep trying to find a trigger but no luck so far. Concidentally, I have a similar problem with Word+Excel and have to reinstall those just as frequently. Something seems to go through my Library and just kill my SymLinks and/or permissions. I thought it might be my offsite backups but it's happened on nights with no backups so I'm at a loss. This was a clean install and although I did bring over some data, i resisted that temptation with Mail and did an export/import of the mBoxes. Crazy.

Drew’s solution worked for me too.

Thanks!

I have to update here. My new mac was horrible so I returned it and got another. Night and day. The new one works incredibly well. So I recant my comment above. There must have been something wrong with the logic board. If you see a 2012 - 3.2GHz mac pro desktop quad core refurbished for sale in the apple store, don't buy it! 🙂 It just may be the fluky one. Rebooted itself all the time, mail didn't work right, auto fill didn't work, spontaneous restarts, and other issues, but it all checked out OK. Like I said, the new one works.

He Drew,

Just a BIG thanks. I did not know that the 'real' library is now hidden. I could not find the folder either. Now all solved. Thanks for the great solution.

PS How to change default so you can see the library folder again?

Andre

On my system I confirmed the symlnk error and command line correction suggested by rootami, which for now seems to have cured my Mail problem. It seems others who report that the fix must be reapplied every few days use the procedure suggested by DrewSchat.

Can anyone tell me if the fix suggested by rootami also need frequent reapplication, or does it last longer?

I have problems with Java and iPhoto which appeared at the same time as my problems with Mail. I looked and I think found a similarly trashed symlink. Here is my termial transcript:

new:Application Support ritch$ cd /Users/ritch/Library/Containers/com.apple.iPhoto/Data/Library/Application\ Support

new:Application Support ritch$ ls -lh

total 64

lrwxr-xr-x 1 ritch staff 46B Feb 9 19:16 AddressBook -> A|e?P?

-rw-------@ 1 ritch staff 10B Feb 18 13:25 A|e%8EP%B1

drwx------ 3 ritch staff 102B Feb 14 15:50 CrashReporter

lrwxr-xr-x 1 ritch staff 47B Feb 9 19:16 SyncServices -> ../../../../../Application Support/SyncServices

lrwxr-xr-x 1 ritch staff 41B Feb 9 19:16 iCloud -> ../../../../../Application Support/iCloud

drwxr-xr-x 3 ritch staff 102B Feb 9 19:20 iLifePageLayout

Can someone suggest a correction to these files, similar to what rootami suggested for Mail, to get iPhoto running again?

I realize iPhoto issues are off-topic for a Mail thread, but the issues seem related. Can anyone can rcommend a thread in which the common denominator of trashed sym links is discueesed?